Like most years, the first day of the meeting covered facility-wide improvements and programs, a student paper prize, a poster session, tours and dinner banquet. The second day this year was special, however, hosting two science workshops as well as the annual meeting of the INCREASE organization.
The process they observed uses CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) sites, where the cell’s DNA can be snipped to insert additional DNA.
Biologists use CRISPR for genetic engineering experiments, but cells may have evolved the mechanism as part of a defense system. The cell uses these locations to store molecular memories of invaders so that they can be selectively eradicated at the next encounter.
The coalition hosted its 23rd annual event on Tuesday, May 16, 2017; this year’s theme was “Investments in Scientific and Educational Research: Fueling American Innovation.” The CHESS poster “The future of synchrotron science” showcased work by David and Chris, displaying how the investment in education at CHESS produces outstanding results.
In an effort to encourage a more diverse pool of students to participate in summer research programs, CHESS has adopted a new model for supporting students when they leave their own college campuses during the summer. The Summer Undergraduate Research in Science and Engineering (SUNRiSE) program brings students and faculty members from their home institutions to Cornell University for the summer months, offering opportunities for visiting faculty to conduct their experiments on CHESS beamlines and allowing students the chance to participate in cutting-edge research at the laboratory.
BioSAXS Essentials is specifically designed as a short, just-the-essentials course for non-specialists wishing to collect and publish BioSAXS data for the first time.
Their objective is to train students to excel using a multidisciplinary and international approach, where students have the opportunity to choose from large-scale facilities across the globe to develop their research.
The Education and Outreach team was delighted to have been invited to speak during a parallel workshop session offered on the third day of the User meeting entitled “Bringing Big Science into the Classroom”. This all-day session, organized in part by Dr. Aleida Perez and her colleagues at the Office of Educational Programs, featured NSLS-II and CFN scientists sharing highlights of recent educational initiatives aimed at secondary science educators.
Which structures are they going to form and how will they be oriented? Would mixing allow a finetuning of the thin film structures for special applications, e.g. in nanolithography, without resorting to substrate prestructuring? The team investigated blends of long and short PS-b-P2VP (polystyrene-b-Poly(2-vinylpyridine) with a length ratio of short to long chains of 1:6.9. Each of these polymers microphase separate into lamellar structures by itself, albeit with different period. Blends should feature coexisting domains of thin and thick AB lamellae [2,3].
Visualizing the shape of the receptor has also allowed them to make a second groundbreaking discovery: They observed that five painkiller molecules they tested did not bind the receptor at the place they expected, which could explain why these painkillers lack efficacy in human patients.
This discovery, published Dec. 9, 2016, in the journal eLife, lays the foundations to create targeted and effective molecules to manage chronic pain.
As a reminder, the changes to the storage ring will: